Letters from Radio Quotidia Last Things 5

Welcome to Radio Quotidia, episode 5. This week’s theme Last Things, 12 minutes or so of music and musings. Quentin Bega here at the mic. I’m broadcasting from our studio located somewhere in the depths of Quotidia inside a digital onion. My aim to keep you entertained for a while.

I used to froth and fume over macro stuff like injustice, destruction of habitat and general hypocrisy as well as micro stuff like personal regret, ageing and general dissolution.  For me, T. S. Eliot set the scene for this sort of navel-gazing with his world-weary Sweeney Among the Nightingales, written in 1918 where his protagonist relaxes in a low bar somewhere in South America, Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees/ Letting his arms hang down to laugh.

One of the ladies of the establishment makes her play, Tries to sit on Sweeney’s knees/Slips and pulls the table cloth/Overturns a coffee cup. An air of diffuse menace pervades the poem as, The waiter brings in oranges/bananas figs and hot-house grapes. The stars above are veiled by cloud and Sweeney hears nightingales sing near a convent as they sang millennia ago when Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon in his bath.

In his masterly 1920 poem, The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, the protagonist sighs, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,/ I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;/ I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,/ And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker. Oh listener, let’s not forget the kicker, And in short, I was afraid. And I ask myself: When did I become such a pusillanimous poltroon?

As a kid in Aruba, I explored caves and abandoned phosphate mines, snorkelled over reefs patrolled by barracuda, where conger and moray eels lurked, built rafts, and launched out, oblivious of dangers, into the Caribbean Sea, accepted dares to leap off roofs and run buck naked along the beach road as people at the Esso Club gaped. Today, fear masquerades as apathy- I don’t want to do that, go there, meet them, or talk to you. I watch myself become more careful: careful not to drive too fast, careful not to drink or eat too much, careful not to give offence- and I hate myself for it.

I hope that somehow gravitational waves rippling through space-time will somehow shift the mirrors of my soul infinitesimally so that I can see reflected someone still recognisably me but somehow altered for the better, and braver, as I find the words to express, with more confidence than I presently possess, the truth about things that matter, and that I may be able to fashion the notes to sing a better tune rising from middle C. [insert song]

The final song for this theme is called The Hill and inspired by a poem of the same name by Edgar Lee Masters, an American poet writing in the late 19^th-early 20^th Century. Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,/The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?/All, all are sleeping on the hill./One passed in a fever,/One was burned in a mine,/One was killed in a brawl,/One died in a jail,/One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife—/All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill./

I identified with Fiddler Jones when first I wrote episode 2 of Letters From Quotidia. I find that, now, years later, that identification is even stronger! And he gets pride of place, here in the final stanza of The Hill Where is Old Fiddler Jones/Who played with life all his ninety years,/Braving the sleet with bared breast,/Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin,/Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven?/Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago,/Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary’s Grove,/Of what Abe Lincoln said/One time at Springfield.// [insert song]

We introduced the month with Thomas Hood’s November and it’s in keeping with the theme of Last  Things that we bid adieu to this month with the final lines of Hood’s poem, I remember, I remember,/The fir trees dark and high;/I used to think their slender tops/Were close against the sky:/It was a childish ignorance,/But now ’tis little joy/To know I’m farther off from Heav’n/Than when I was a boy.// In two days’ time on December 2nd, I’’ll present the theme for that month-  Lost and Found.

 Credits: All written text, song lyrics and music (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone- Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 9 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.